 |
| Cover image courtesy Amazon.com |
Two years ago, I had stood in the back room of a small store near my home, looking at the books in the free library, which at that time was simply metal shelving lined with old newspapers and holding a jumble of more than books. But I had already found many interesting choices. One day I read a promising title, and pulling the book from a lopsided stack, my attention was drawn to an artist’s rendering of a street in a small rural town backed by high hills. I opened to the first page and read—then continued to read. I flipped to the back cover and found a description by Publishers Weekly: “For readers yearning for a cozy, neighborly read, the town created by Karon’s fine descriptive style has much to recommend it.” I returned to the front page to re-read, paused, then put the book back. This time I had clearly seen, “Father, make me a blessing to someone today, through Christ our Lord. Amen.” At Home in Mitford was a Christian book—not for me.
It was days later when I returned, unaware that I had experienced an inner shift. Still finding no other option, I opened the same book, but this time with a new feeling for the charm of a simple ink sketch on the first page under the name, “Barnabas.” A man wearing spectacles leaned backwards as a dog the size of a “sofa” had its paws on the man’s shoulders and was making a friendly effort to lick the man’s face. Now I read the first page again. This time my new thought was that the short prayer beginning with, “Father …” was one from which I could fashion a prayer to start my own day using my beliefs. And so I did.
“Baba, through me, may you use me to bless someone today.”
Inspiration had replaced an old judgment hidden within my memory. The prayer was that of Father Tim Kavanagh, an Episcopal minister, who by the end of At Home in Mitford I found to be not only an engaging teacher of spiritual effort, but also a new and cherished small-town friend. On my next trip to America, I purchased the entire nine-book Mitford Series.
Today the free library is a pleasant browse within the store, settled onto three shelves above the soaps, detergents, and other cleaning supplies, and At Home in Mitford is still in the collection. As I am presently in my fourth reading of the series, I am noting a deeper level of understanding of my own spiritual truths through a naturally occurring selectivity of Father’s Tim’s words, many of which I hope to bring to the blog—the following being the first, from These High, Green Hills.
God was fully in control—firmly and finally and awfully–and
he knew it for the first time in his heart, instead of in his head.*
I had experienced a bland relationship with God that was intellectual without any intimacy of my heart. Then at age forty-seven I joined a spiritual study group where I first opened to God as a part of my life. Seven years later when I began the training that has brought me to where I am today, my experiential learning sped up, and although my education has been well supported by readings, my primary teacher continues to be experience. I have felt and faced the suffering of fears emerging from my subconscious, lived with them as diminishable through perseverance and faith, and willingly continue to grow. I have come to know God as in control, sustaining and supporting me from within my heart.
My realization is, “Though various books may be chosen for enjoyment, many hold spiritual truths for a reader who is ready at a deeper level of awareness to recognize a newly perceived truth.”
*Jan Karon, These High, Green Hills, (Penguin Group, NY, 1996), 169.